Daisy Buchanan is the most troubled of all the characters in The Great Gatsby. To some, she is suppressed by convention, and to others, a self-absorbed and irresponsible individual who causes havoc in her wake. Can she be victim and villain, however? Daisy is a product of her time and class. She has no choice as a woman in the 1920s. She has married rich and secure to Tom Buchanan, not out of love, but out of security and finance. When Gatsby returns to her life, with the promise of romance and freedom, she is attracted but falls back again into the security of marriage. Her “full of money” attitude testifies to how deep she is mired in her privileged world where comfort is valued over morality. The options Daisy makes also cause actual pain. She continues dating Gatsby but refuses to leave Tom and take him, holding Gatsby on the line with empty promises. When she runs Myrtle Wilson over and kills her in a hit-and-run, she allows Gatsby to be blamed and doesn’t speak to him further. She is responsible for killing Gatsby, and nothing is ever done to her. She and Tom “retreat back into their money… and let other people clean up the mess.” Fitzgerald is portraying Daisy as trapped in traditional roles of gender and ruthless. She is the golden ideal that Gatsby yearns for, yet also the empty, destructive influence of the ideal. Daisy’s not wicked but not innocent either.